


Fools Rush In (And Idiots Take Forever)

by byoomgothegunboi



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angst for sure, Aziraphale is a guard, Crowley is, Fluff and Angst, Happy Ending, M/M, Museum AU, Mutual Pining, Well - Freeform, and now I'm dying, but he's still important, definitely not a guard, like I said haven't actually finished this, probably, shadwell's really only there if you squint, typing in Crowley is in the tags will send you on quite the ROLLERCOASTER, well idk I haven't actually finished this yet but probably
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-30
Updated: 2020-04-16
Packaged: 2021-02-28 16:47:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 8,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23390440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/byoomgothegunboi/pseuds/byoomgothegunboi
Summary: Aziraphale genuinely enjoyed his job. There was perhaps several million dollars’ worth of art held within the museum’s walls, and it was his job to protect all of it. It was something sacred, something that he would protect with his life. Pacing his usual route in the hall of Holy Works of the Late Eleventh Century to Present Day, he fancied himself not Aziraphale, guard of the east wing, but Aziraphale, Guardian of the Eastern Gate.Aziraphale, Guardian of the Eastern Gate, had been staring at the red-haired man so long he’d forgotten what he’d asked him.A Good Omens AU that -234829 people asked for.
Relationships: Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 11
Kudos: 20





	1. Prologue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We start, as any prologue might, with a heaping helping of foreshadowing and two evil minions Doing Their Best.

The two shadowy figures stood slouched on opposite sides of the alley. They rather liked the aura of alleys, and on this particular occasion had managed to find an exceptionally dark and moody one in which to conduct their business. Only the shadiest of corners for such shady matters would do, after all.

One lifted his wrist, and the glow of the streetlight reflected off his watch with a wink of amber.

“He’s late,” he growled.

The figure on the other side shifted his weight to his other foot and huffed. “Flash bastard, probably waiting to make a dramatic entrance.”

As if on cue, the heavy thumping bass of a song through car speakers grew louder and louder until a dark car rolled smoothly to a stop in front of the alley. Its occupant stepped out, the click of his boots echoing even on the pavement, and locked his automobile with an audible chirp.

“I do hope I found the right alley,” he said, as soon as he’d sauntered far enough in to make out the shadowy figures leaned on either wall. “Otherwise this encounter might be a bit awkward.”

“Wouldn’t be a problem if you’d show up on time,” the hooded man on the left snapped back.

The figure stopped in his tracks. “Hastur? That you?”

Hastur and his companion slunk from their resting places against the wall and came forward just enough so that their glowering faces would be visible in the dim streetlight. Hastur’s hood cast harsh shadows across his face, sharpening his features and making him look rather intimidating. [1]

The man under their glare threw his hands up and then crossed them with an annoyed huff. “Hastur, we live together. I don’t understand why you had to drag me across town for some meeting that we could’ve done in our living room-”

“Ligur,” Hastur interjected. At his prompt, Ligur stepped forward further and shoved a paper into the man’s chest.

His arms went around it instinctively, even as he took a staggering step back. Further inspection revealed that it was a newspaper. He lowered his sunglasses to read the print, circled in pink highlighter.

He read it again. 

“This is-”

“The one we’ve been waiting for,” Ligur spoke up with a grin, his teeth glinting menacingly in the darkness. [2]

“The big one,” Hastur finished. “Finally. It begins now.”

“Now,” the man echoed distractedly, staring at the page with a frown.

“Look there, look what we’ll be getting.” Ligur stepped forward again and pointed to a number underlined three times in pink highlighter. “That’s a lot of zeroes.”

“Zeroes,” the man echoed again.

“Boss said they’d be meeting with us sometime soon,” Hastur continued. “I expect we’ll be going over roles.”

The man was still frowning at the page.

“You don’t seem too excited about this,” Ligur stated accusingly.

He looked up. “Me? What? No! Thrilled,” he said quickly, raising his hands and the paper for good measure. “Chuffed to bits. I, ah- just tired, is all. Long day of… bad deeds. General wickedness. Icing on the cake, this.” He gestured to the paper again, beginning to walk backward as he talked. “I can’t wait.”

“Good. Because we’ve been working so long for this, it’d be a shame for something to mess it up now,” Hastur warned.

“Completely agree. Which is why I should… you know, head to bed. Rest up. Big things ahead guys! Exciting… things.” he continued his backward saunter, nearly to his car now.

“Exciting indeed,” Ligur called after him, adding an evil chuckle for emphasis. Hastur grinned darkly. [3]

“Quite.” The man turned and walked the remaining five steps to his car, paused, and turned around.

“Lift home, Hastur?”

Hastur paused.

“Yes, please.”

Hastur shared one more menacing look with his compatriot before lurking off to the passenger seat of a black Bentley. The throaty roar of the engine and thumping of a catchy bass line were all that could be heard as the car took off down the street, disappearing into the night.

* * *

1\. Hastur knew this because his companion, whose name was Ligur, had told him so. They had come early to practice their scare tactics on each other. ↩  
2\. This was Ligur's own perfected scare tactic. Hastur had complimented it enthusiastically. ↩  
3\. This they had not practiced; it was a spur-of-the-moment sort of maneuver. Although later they would agree they had pulled it off quite well. ↩

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> bro shoutout to La_Temperanza for the footnote guides bc doing that took longer than writing the actual chAPTER
> 
> but yeaaaah here we be!!! I'm hoping this'll be updated frequently (becausewhatelseistheretodoinquarantine) but honestly I have no idea and thank you for reading :)))))))))))


	2. Silk Gloves and Turkeys

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Them discover a covert scheme to steal some valuable weaponry and have some heart-stopping run-ins with some truly evil people.
> 
> Well, sort of.

It is said that the world will end in fire and flame, that the sea will boil and the great Kraken shall rise, that the forests will crumble under the roar of hellfire, that War, Famine, Pollution (née: Pestilence) and Death shall rule until the whole of the world is consumed under their collective malevolent glare.

Should that day arise in Adam’s lifetime, he decided, he’d take all his loved ones and go on a museum tour. It was verifiably impossible for anything even remotely interesting to occur during a museum tour, and it would last so long Adam was fairly sure it would stretch beyond the End of Things entirely. While fire and flood wreaked havoc across the world, the only danger they’d face was the mind-numbing voice of their tour guide.

In short, no, he was not having fun on this field trip.

From the looks of it, he was not the only one. Brian was the sort of boy who needed his hands solidly _in_ something in order to be having fun, a trait that clashed directly with a place where everything worth touching was encased in thick glass boxes. Pepper had declared the museum “a shrine to the modern white man” and devoutly withheld all interest for the entire duration of the tour thus far. Wensleydale was the only one who had initially been looking forward to the trip. His interest was held well enough in the beginning, kept strong through the planetarium, began to wither by the second hour in the Victorian Hall of Art, wasted away during the showcase of civil war embroidered handkerchiefs, and was crushed to oblivion in the Asian History hall’s collection of Han Dynasty chopstick holders.

Adam thought himself nothing if not a source of entertainment for his friends, and at this point in time felt as if he were underperforming on his duties. Resolving to fix this, he gave the three of them the universal symbol for “let’s hang back”, a slight head-tilt. Pepper, Brian and Wensleydale all heard the signal loud and clear and fell to the rear of the group.

“What a load of bull,” Brian whispered. “The swords in all the movies about Sparta had to be at least ten feet long, but all the ones in all the halls we’ve been down just look like kitchen knives.”

“Well maybe they are,” Wensleydale argued, tilting his head. “My mom says there’s no conflict you can’t solve by talkin’ it out over a nice big meal. Like Thanksgiving. Cool to think all the swords are just turkey knives in disguise!”

“That’s ridiculous,” Pepper snapped. “That’s the sort of story that men tell housewives to make their roles seem important. It’s brainwashing, that is!”

“No,” said Adam, the threads of a story already weaving themselves together in his head. “It’s a brilliant disguise. There’s a secret society of women - in Rome, it was in Rome, where all the Spartan knives were from, they got sick of their husbands. So they cooked them all a big meal on the same night. But the meal was poisoned and all the men died and the women could restart their city, all by themselves. Those knives on the wall - those are from where it happened. They were used to cut the meat and now they still have poison all over them. That’s why they’re in those glass cases: one touch would kill you instantly.”

There was something to be said about Adam’s stories. There was nothing particularly dramatic or eloquent about them, but the quiet conviction with which he told them tended to make people listen to, if not wholeheartedly believe, everything he said. Suddenly, at least in the imaginative minds of those within earshot, the swords on the walls seemed to shine an eerie poison-dipped green.

“Wicked,” Brian whispered.

“That’s why- that’s why, right this instant, there are thieves out to steal them,” Adam continued conspiratorially. “They’re wearing silk gloves. Silk fibers are so tight that they don’t let poison in. So the thieves can take the knives and use them to kill whoever they want. But,” he continued, more lightbulbs going off in his head, “We can stop them. Come on- no one is looking now.”

As the school group continued on, Adam pulled Brian - who in turn pulled Pepper, who in turn pulled Wensleydale- back behind a corner, hidden from view. He squatted behind a lectern displaying what could have been an old incan mop bucket and shrugged his backpack off his shoulders. From it he removed a small plastic case vaguely resembling a first-aid kit.

“I always have this, in case of emergencies like this,” he explained, beginning to remove the contents of the case - which, in fact, had very little do do with first aid whatsoever.

First were four walkie-talkies, the sort one gets for Christmas and has a range of all of fifty feet before squealing static takes over the speakers. They were handed out to each of them. Next was a pen, which went to Pepper.

“Here. For looking for footprints,” Adam whispered, clicking the pen once. A black light shone from the tip, and he ran it along the ground and walls before handing it over to Pepper. “The thieves won’t have their fingerprints because of the gloves. But everyone has footprints. You look for the ones with no heels - that means they’re on their tiptoes, because they’re sneaking around, see?”

Adam mimed walking on his tiptoes, and reached back into his bag. He pulled out a pair of rather flimsy sunglasses and gave them to Wensleydale. “For you. Put those on.”

Wensleydale obeyed, and through the ill-fitting sunglasses his face took on a pleased expression. “I can see behind me!”

Adam nodded. “The edges of the glasses are mirrors, so you can always see what’s happening behind you. That way you can be on the lookout in all directions for people with silk gloves. And Brian, you and I will both be planting these.”

He reached into his bag again and pulled out three plastic cylinders, each no larger than a bottle cap. Brian held out his hand and Adam placed them, one by one, into his open palm.

“Hidden microphones. For you to plant in places where people won’t find them. Newt helped me connect them to my computer back home, so when people say things in secret meeting places about how they’re going to steal the knives, we can hear it too.” [1]

“Brilliant,” Brian said, inspecting one of them. “Where did you get all this?”

“Anathema got me a spy kit for Christmas,” Adam replied. “Now, we need to split up if we’re going to find the thieves. And don’t let anyone from school catch you.”

“Why, because the school is in on it? A diversion of some sort?” Wensleydale whispered excitedly.

“No, because then we’ll get detention. Come with me, Pepper, we’ll head that way. Brian, Wensleydale, you go left. And remember- if you see anyone with silk gloves, tell the group with the walkie-talkies.”

The museum was so much more fun when you were sneaking around on the lookout for thieves.

Pepper and Adam split near the entrance of the building, Pepper going to search for footprints in a dark hall of paintings from the fourteenth century and Adam circling back to the planetarium to plant a microphone among the rings of Saturn.

Brian and Wensleydale split when they hit the back of the museum. Brian began hiding microphones in the natural history display before realizing he only had three of them and that it might have been more practical to cover more ground with them.

Wensleydale found himself in a hall full of several paintings of Jesus and crosses all over the place. Of course, he would’ve seen this had he been observing his surroundings and not just the mirrored image of where he’d already been. He was so focused on the reflection, in fact, that he did not notice he was about to walk into a man until he did.

“Oof! Sorry, sir!” He said hastily, scrambling backwards, tripping over his feet and ending up on the floor. He removed the sunglasses. A good spy, however clumsy, does not get caught using his gear.

The man he had run into peered down at him, and suddenly Wensleydale wished he’d gotten the black light pen instead. The man wore sunglasses of his own (though not the spy variety, as his actually fit on his face with no room for peripheral reflections), a dark blazer that made him seem taller than he really was, and dark grey combat boots. He wore a deep frown that could’ve been rationally interpreted as concern, but when coupled with flaming red hair seemed a great deal more like anger, at least in the eyes of the slight boy beneath him.

“Alright?” The man asked, extending a hand to help him up. Wensleydale nodded, accepting the help and brushing himself off. “Where’re your parents?” The man inquired again.

Wensleydale blanched. “They’re, erm, restroom,” he mumbled, gesturing vaguely in the other direction and then turning on his heel and walking quickly that way.

* * *

“I swear, he was up to no good!” Wensleydale whispered fiercely in the back of the school bus. Their clandestine discussion was masked by the chatter and movement of the other schoolchildren as they filed in, the museum tour finally and mercifully over. Brian gave him a skeptical look.

“Just because he was wearing sunglasses? You were wearing sunglasses too, you know. Maybe he’s on our side.”

The four of them, having completed their surveys of the museum, had met at the entrance of the museum just as the tour was wrapping up. By some miracle, [2] neither their teacher nor the tour guide seemed to have noticed their absence, and they merrily joined the group just as it was filing out of the building. Currently they were seated in the back of the bus, going over their findings. Brian noticed a man by the history display, stroking his beard with a noticeably gloved hand. Pepper had found a woman carrying a thick leather-bound book between silk-gloved fingers. Adam had found a woman in silk gloves in the museum’s cafeteria, slipping a sandwich in her purse.

“The sunglasses aren’t important,” Adam reminded them. “What was important was if he was wearing the silk gloves.”

“The man Brian found wasn’t wearing silk gloves,” Wensleydale argued. “You said they looked more like cotton.”

“Yeah, but they were gloves,” Adam replied. “In this economy some people can’t afford the silk kind. Especially thieves.”

“That’s why they steal things,” Brian added helpfully.

“So,” Pepper chimed in, bringing them back to the task at hand. “Did your mystery man have gloves? And were they silk?”

“Or did he look poor?” Brian added.

Wensleydale couldn’t remember if the man he’d run into wore gloves, or anything about him, really, besides the fact that he looked rather menacing. He went over their encounter again in his mind. He ran into the man, fell down, the man extended a hand to help him up…

“No,” he hesitantly concluded. “No gloves.”

“Well that settles it, then,” Adam said with an air of finality. “He was innocent.”

The last of the students took their seats and the bus rumbled to life. Through the window, the four watched as the museum fell behind them, and a boring day salvaged by an excellent game of Spy came to a close. Wensleydale rested his chin on his hand glumly as the bus stopped at a light. He peered out of the window as a woman pulled a sandwich out of her purse and offered it to a man standing there with a sign that might have been a warning about witches if anyone had cared to read it.

It would have interested them a great deal to know that of the four people they had considered that day, the one they had discounted was in fact the only actual thief the museum had ever housed in the fifty years it had been open.

* * *

1\. Completely by accident. Before Newt had touched the equipment, the feedback from the microphones consisted solely of cookie-cutter phrases about vaguely nefarious plans verified by the manufacturer. And, in the interest of national security, the CIA. back  
2\. This miracle, as it were, had no divine or demonic interaction. Sometimes, despite all the celestial influences that may or may not govern the world, miracles simply happen of their own volition. back

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chap the bois finally meet >:)
> 
> Thanks for reading as alwaysssssss


	3. Bookmarks and Honey Pots

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aziraphale meets a visitor. One of thousands of visitors, really, nothing special about this one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> is quarantine giving anyone else REALLY weird dreams or is it just me

His name was Aziraphale. People called him Aziraphale. See, he wasn’t the type of person people gave nicknames. Or, no, his name was actually quite well-suited for nicknames. People could call him Az. Zira. Azzy, maybe. Or maybe not. He didn’t quite know how he felt about the name Azzy. Perhaps only if they were particularly close to him.

But therein lay the problem. Aziraphale wasn’t the type of person to have close friends. He was warm, and polite, and courteous in a way that would make a thirteenth-century knight jealous. At social gatherings, he asked people questions, careful never to push too deeply into their lives, showed interest in their hobbies, shared hearty laughs at their quips.

But then the parties drew to a close and he said “it was lovely to meet you” and shook their hands and bid them farewell and never spoke to them again, never kept in touch, wiped his hands clean and started fresh acquaintances the next time he left his house. Everyone knew of Aziraphale. No one _knew_ Aziraphale.

The exceptions to this were, of course, his colleagues. Being a museum security guard was not a one-man venture, as much as Aziraphale would have liked it to be. During work avoiding head security, Gabriel, was physically impossible, and at company parties it was difficult to make himself scarce when museum folk had such impeccable taste in complimentary wines. But when he was there he did his best to keep it professional: he talked museum stories, their latest exhibit, what had gone wrong in the storage unit that week and who had been fired because of it.

It wasn’t that he never wanted to make friends, per se, but the company parties seemed to be the only social gatherings he attended nowadays. His colleagues were just not his ideal companions. All a bit holier-than-thou, if you asked him. Too quick to find fault in visitors. What was a museum without a bit of goodhearted fun? Hell on Earth, according to the lot of them.

So they simply knew him as Aziraphale, guard of the East Wing, and he was okay with that.[1] He had just enough of a personality not to seem robotic, but not too much to be worth knowing past the occasional work story. He had a good balance going.

And besides, he genuinely enjoyed his job. Nearly everyone who came in was there to enjoy what they had to display. All of it was very important; there was perhaps several million dollars’ worth of art held within the museum’s walls, and it was his job to protect all of it. Aziraphale had grown up Catholic, and to him the museum almost felt like a church. It was something sacred, something that he would protect with his life. Pacing his usual route in the hall of Holy Works of the Late Eleventh Century to Present Day, he fancied himself not Aziraphale, guard of the east wing, but Aziraphale, Guardian of the Eastern Gate.

Aziraphale, Guardian of the Eastern Gate, had been staring at the red-haired man so long he’d forgotten what he’d asked him.

“I’m sorry?” he said, blinking quickly to break eye contact and glancing at the painting to the left of them.[2] He turned back to the man as he began to speak again.

“I said, that’s your first name, or last name? Aziraphale?” the man repeated, pointing at his badge. Aziraphale followed his finger down to the badge and his name emblazoned under it in gold letters and looked back up at the man.

“I- er- first. That’s my first name. My last name is Fell.” He winced internally. He hadn’t _asked_ for his last name, did he?

“Aziraphale Fell,” the man said experimentally, letting the words roll off his lips. He smirked. “Catchy.”

“Yes, quite.” Aziraphale could think of nothing else to say to this (admittedly very attractive) man, so he smiled politely and looked back at the painting on the wall, pretending to examine it as if he hadn’t been staring at it for the past ten years of his life. If he had cared to, he could probably name every blade of grass in the depiction of the garden.

“Been in the states long?” the stranger continued. Aziraphale looked back at him.

“I beg your pardon?”

“I noticed the, ah-” he gestured to his mouth, probably indicating Aziraphale’s clearly not local accent. It was echoed in the man’s voice, too, though his had a distinctive northern lilt.

“Oh, yes, right. About three years now. You?”

“I came up for uni, been stuck in the city since. And still can’t find a place that does a decent breakfast,” he grumbled.

Aziraphale nodded with the obligate sense of camaraderie one feels upon encountering a fellow local in a foreign place.

“But anyway, thank you, Aziraphale,” the man continued, following his gaze to the Garden of Eden.

“Er- yes, of course, my pleasure,” Aziraphale responded automatically without knowing what it was he was being thanked for. He had been standing at his post as usual, had seen a boy run into the man and fall, so he had walked over as the boy was scrambling to his feet… _ah, right, yes._ “I’m glad everything’s alright,” he finished brightly.

“I hope we can say the same for the boy,” the man murmured, looking in the direction of where he had run. “Seemed in a hurry.”

“He did, rather,” Aziraphale agreed, chancing another glance at the redheaded man. On this pass he noticed light freckles dusting his nose and cheekbones. “Although I suppose as long as he’s not damaging any of our property he’s allowed to hurry wherever he likes.”

The man hummed quietly at that, suddenly looking pensive. “So long as no rules are broken,” he mused, almost more to himself than anything, “Stay within your limits and you’re totally free.”

Aziraphale didn’t quite know how to respond to that one, except to remember that the man was, in fact, breaking a rule of the museum. And Aziraphale remembered the last time he’d let a rule slip - not a good look for head office.

“Yes, well, Mr…”

The man paused for a moment. “Crawly.”

“Right. Well, I’m terribly sorry about all this, Mr. Crawly, but if I am to be enforcing the rules here - well, for security purposes and all the like, I’d have to ask you to-”

Crawly raised an eyebrow, his expression still hidden behind dark sunglasses.

“The sunglasses, you see. I’m afraid they’re not allowed - I’m sure you understand-”

Crawly smirked and nodded. “Right.” To Aziraphale’s relief, he moved to take them off.

And then he was staring into amber eyes so light they might’ve been molten gold, and found himself unable to speak. He briefly considered whether or not it was rude to ask him to put them back on.

“Er, thank you for understanding,” he managed finally, to which Crawly replied with a dry smile.

“Just doing your job,” he said in a tone that might have sounded sarcastic if Aziraphale had been able to pay any attention. “All sorts of wily folk around here, I’m sure you’re always… _thwarting,_ and the like.” His smile was still crooked and definitely read something in between the lines, had Aziraphale at all been privy to it.

“Oh, I do hope so,” Aziraphale responded earnestly, switching his gaze to his hands which were busy twisting around each other. “I’d like to think that of all the times I’ve bothered people over the rules, it’s protected this establishment at least once. I’d be more of a heckler than a guard otherwise.”

Crawly appeared to mumble something to himself that Aziraphale didn’t quite catch, then chuckled softly and turned to look at him.

“You always guard here?”

“Well, not exactly in this spot, but yes. Guard of Holy Works of the Late Eleventh Century to Present day, at your service.”

His eyes flitted from Aziraphale to the painting in front of him. “Guarding the _Garden of Eden,_ ” he mused. Another smile quirked his lips as he turned back to Aziraphale. “So that makes you an angel, then?”

Aziraphale felt his cheeks getting quite warm at this. Being the subject of Crawly’s molten-gold gaze didn’t exactly help matters, either. He smoothed down the front of his uniform. “Er- well, a cherubim, technically speaking. You know- angel of the Guardian variety.”

The man rolled his eyes and grinned. “A bit pedantic, you think?”

Aziraphale puffed up at this, giving Crawly what he hoped could pass as a scalding look. “I’d say the right amount of pedantic, considering the nature of the building we’re in. ”

Crawly put his hands up and took a sauntering step backward, the universal sign for ‘got me there’. “Well then, I suppose I had better stop distracting the pedant guard and let him get on with his… _thwarting,_ yeah?” There was that smile again, as if he were sharing some joke that Aziraphale was supposed to understand.

“I- yes, rather,” he replied, trying hard not to reveal his disappointment at their conversation coming to a close. “And I suppose I should let you continue your tour without any more of my heckling. It was very good meeting you, Mr. Crawly!”

Crawly chuckled, that same smile still on his face. “I’ll see you around, angel.”

He turned and sauntered off and Aziraphale watched him go, feeling strangely out of breath. He vaguely wondered how a man comprised entirely of slim, hard lines could move in a manner so fluid it could barely be considered walking. He tried not to notice how infuriatingly tight his dark jeans were.

He failed at this.

_I’ll see you around, angel._

The words echoed over and over in Aziraphale’s head, as did the image of warm eyes so piercing he’d felt the gaze directly on his mind. Freckles like glowing embers thrown across porcelain skin. The quirk of his lips speaking a language all their own, a language Aziraphale suddenly found himself desperately wanting to learn.

_Get yourself together, Aziraphale,_ he chided himself, shaking his head minutely. He smoothed down the front of his uniform once more, turned the opposite way, and resumed his usual route through the wing.

Dream as he might, he knew how these sorts of things went. When- if- he ever saw the man again, they’d be new strangers, slate wiped clean, right at square one. Aziraphale was not the type to have close friends, let alone with one of the hundreds - if not thousands - of people passing him every day. Crawly had probably already moved on, chalked his encounter up to a mild inconvenience. He’d probably already put his sunglasses back on.

And over the years, Aziraphale had found this to be rather comforting. Most people were much too fluid, much too fast to keep up with. He preferred to collect these moments, frozen in time, bookmarked passages in a well-worn novel. Characters would grow and change, for better or for worse, but all the best bits along the way were safe within the pages. Isolated sentiments he could turn to at his leisure, finding comfort in the words that would never fade no matter how many times he read them.

He caught a glimpse of the _Garden of Eden_ on his way back around and found himself smiling. His name was Aziraphale. People called him Aziraphale. Except on one occasion, where a handsome man with honey-colored eyes and a smile that knew too much called him angel.

It may have pleased him (or perhaps not) to know that when said man got home, he emptied his pockets, found a ticket stub from the museum among the gum wrappers and loose change, remembered the odd security guard in the tartan bowtie, and put the ticket carefully back in his pocket.

* * *

1\. Well, to be fair, most that tried to make conversation probably knew him as Aziraphale, guard of the East Wing and sometimes a Bit Heavy-Handed on the Wine Spritzers, and he was okay with that, too. back  
2\. _Garden of Eden,_ A. Bogardy, 1998. back

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next up we go back to Wensleydale making some... Interesting Discoveries


	4. Eyes and Ears

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wensleydale takes another trip the museum, and thus Operation Catch the Thief is born.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alexa, add tag abuse of footnotes to the fic

Wensleydale _knew_ that man was up to no good, he just _knew_ it.

Well, no, perhaps to say he knew it all along would have been a lie. Truthfully, he hadn’t given it much thought since they’d left the museum that day, preoccupied almost immediately by the next game Adam had thought up. No, the next time he remembered the strange man with the sunglasses was that weekend, when his parents decided that their son’s incredibly dull museum experience - per his account - had to be rectified with a family trip back there with much more interesting commentary provided Mr. Wensleydale himself.[1]

The thing that jogged his memory was, in fact, the very same man sauntering down the hall toward them, straight through the Holy Works of the Late Eleventh Century to Present day. Wensleydale gulped, his father’s droning commentary buzzing into the background, and took an ever-so-subtle step backward to hide himself between his parents. The man ignored them, however, the heels of his shoes clicking past and over to the security guard standing demurely off to the side.

“Hello, Aziraphale,” Wensleydale tried not to hear, but heard anyway. He briefly weighed the impropriety of eavesdropping against the importance of overhearing potential nefarious plans. Curiosity got the better of him and he peeked past his mother to see the security guard’s eyes widen as he turned to the man.

“Oh! Mr. Crawly, you're- hello! Visiting so soon?”

Mr. Crawly shifted his weight to one foot, shrugging a single shoulder. “Not much else to do in little ol’ New York."[2]

Feeling overwhelmingly like his behavior was poaching into Eavesdropping territory, Wensleydale turned back to the painting his father was still animatedly describing and tried to tune back in. Something about a garden.

His neighbor Anathema had a very nice garden outside her cottage, and there were no naked people standing in hers. He really didn’t see what all the fuss was about naked people in gardens. He was fairly certain anyone who tried that now would get a very stern talking to from Mr. Tyler.

His attention found its way back to Mr. Crawly, somewhat unwittingly. He vaguely listened as the man made a joke about the worth of some sculpture in front of them.

“Why,” the security guard responded, his voice taking on a sort of different tone. “Are you going to try and steal that, too?”

When Wensleydale’s head whipped around to stare at the security guard, he was fairly certain Mr. Crawly’s did, too. They both stared at the guard, who was smiling lightly as if he’d just made a comment about the weather.

“Ng- what- you-” Mr. Crawly said, trailing off.

“So it’s true!” the security guard exclaimed, his smile only getting wider. “Head office caught wind - as I’m sure you’re aware - of certain _whisperings_ about a heist taking place. We’ve been on the lookout for familiar faces as of late, and the security cameras recognized yours last time you were here. You’re one of them, aren’t you? You’re a thief?”

“I- uh-” Mr. Crawly replied, visibly squirming. That was all the answer he needed to give. The security guard beamed at him, like he’d found an undercover celebrity instead of an art thief.

“My, how exciting! My very first bust!” He did a satisfied little wiggle, which Wensleydale, who to be fair did not have any experience in criminal justice, was fairly sure wasn’t the correct response to catching a thief in action.

Mr. Crawly didn’t think so, either, by the looks of things. He crossed his arms and lifted an eyebrow at the man. “So, what next, then? You arrest me? Pin me down, perhaps? Put me in handcuffs?"[3]

Wensleydale pondered the effectiveness of a thief asking to be put in handcuffs.

The guard’s smile faltered for a brief second, then changed ever so slightly into a more scheming smirk. “Well, by doing so, we’d lose your valuable patronage to this establishment,” he replied, gesturing to the museum ticket stub in Mr. Crawly’s exposed hand. “Even if it were for- er, _wily_ purposes. No, I’d think it more appropriate to simply keep you under watchful eye, Mr. Crawly. If that is indeed your real name.”

An array of sounds that weren’t quite words came from Mr. Crawly’s mouth as he stepped back and uncrossed his arms. And finally: “No, no, it’s not.”

“Well, then, do I get the pleasure of knowing it? Seeing as, I suppose, we’re going to be spending a lot of time together.”

Mr. Crawly (now, Wensleydale supposed, NOT Mr. Crawly) flushed a rather bright shade of pink. He rubbed his face in an exasperated sort of way. Wensleydale reasoned that if this were the security guard that caught him in the act, he’d be rather exasperated, too.

The security guard was still smiling. “So? Out with it. Who’s under the mask? James Bond? Benedict Arnold?”

“Crowley,” said… Crowley.

The guard said nothing at this, then his lips quirked into a smile. “Crowley,” he repeated, the two syllables laced with what could have been humor or could have been something entirely else.

“I _panicked,_ okay?” Crowley replied sharply. “ _You_ come up with a fake name on the spot, see how that goes.”

The security guard opened his mouth to respond, but was interrupted. Well, he wasn’t interrupted so much as Wensleydale’s eavesdropping was interrupted by his mother pointing over to the sculpture the two men were in front of.

“Oh, that one’s a nice one there, honey - could you tell us a bit more about it?”

He felt his parents moving over toward the thief and promptly dug his heels into the ground.

“Jeremy? What’s wrong? Did you not want to go that way?”

 _NOT AT ALL, NOT TO CERTAIN DEATH,_ he thought frantically.

“No thank you,” he managed instead. “I think… can we please go the other way? To the planetarium?”

His father smiled. “Sure thing, youngster. Let’s go learn about the cosmos.”

And to Wensleydale’s immense relief, they turned and walked in the opposite direction. He did, though, have to chance a backward look at the thief Crowley as they left the Holy Works of the Late Eleventh Century to Present day. He had his head thrown back in laughter, apparently in response to something the guard had said, because the other man was grinning with the faintest hint of pink dusting his cheeks.

An evil scheming laugh, surely. He _knew_ it. He _knew_ that man was up to no good.

* * *

“The same guy? Are you sure?” Brian asked, kicking a stone down the dirt path. They were nearly to Adam’s house, and Wensleydale had been animatedly recounting his experience of that morning the whole way there. It was the most words he’d ever strung together in a single go, and Pepper and Brian were so taken aback by it that they let him continue uninterrupted.

“I’m positive. He was even wearing the same thing. Except he didn’t have glasses on this time… that’s how the security guard got him, I think.”

They were close enough now that Dog was alerted by their presence, and scampered over to them. Adam wasn’t far behind, pushing through the hole in the shrubs that lined his backyard.

“Adam! Wensley found a thief! An actual thief, at the museum!” Brian said in lieu of greeting.

“It was the one without the silk gloves,” Wensleydale added. “The one I ran into. He’s actually a thief!”

Adam listened silently as Wensleydale gave an abbreviated version of what had happened. Afterward, his eyes glinted with the sort of look that usually meant there would shortly be a new game to be played.

“Of course,” he said, turning to Dog. “ _Not_ wearing gloves is a cover for a thief… that’s _supposed to be._ Brilliant.” He turned back to his friends. “Follow me.”

They did, all the way up to his room, and crowded around his old laptop computer. With a few clicks, he had a program open with eight different microphone icons in it.

“These have audio from the microphones we planted,” he explained, gesturing to the icons. "The first six are already in the museum, but they’re filled with a load of talking about nothing. The seventh one is there, on my dresser. I’m going to use it to record the tooth fairy when this tooth-” he pointed to a premolar and wiggled it with his tongue- “comes out. And this eighth one,” he continued, reaching behind the laptop and pulling out a grey bottle cap-looking device, “I was going to save for next Christmas to see if I can record Santa, but I think catching this thief is more important.”

His friends nodded solemnly.

“So. We go back to the museum, plant it in- Wensley, what did you say the thief was trying to steal?”

“Some statue in that hall with all the crosses and Jesus paintings.”

“Right. We go back to the museum, plant it in the hall with the Jesus paintings, and listen in whenever the thief goes back there next.”

“And what do we do when we catch him?” Pepper asked. “I hardly think we can take down an actual real-life criminal by ourselves.”

“We can send the tapes to the police, or to that security guard,” Wensleydale replied, to which Adam nodded. “He said he wanted to keep an eye on Crowley. So he can be the eyes, and we can be the ears.”

“Like the police would listen to us,” Pepper replied. “Nobody takes kids seriously.”

“Then we submit them anonymously,” Adam said, with an air of finality. “We’re spies, remember? As long as we don’t get caught, how old we are won’t even have to matter.”

Eventually, a plan was agreed upon, and six days later the microphone was planted between the marble wings of an angel statue by Adam while Brian, Pepper and Wensleydale distracted the security guard.[4]

Unbeknownst to the museum, their official pair of ears had just been put into operation.[5]

* * *

1\. Wensleydale had decided “interesting” was a rather generous adjective. back  
2\. If Wensleydale had any sophisticated sense of linguistic terminology, he would’ve described this statement as _deflective sarcasm._ However, Wensleydale is eleven. back  
3\. Any other observer would have caught the suggestive lilt in his voice. Wensleydale, again, is eleven. back  
4\. This was a feat they found much easier than expected; one question about a painting had Aziraphale talking at a length that would've made the dullest of tour guides sound like a comedian. back  
5\. And unbeknownst to the ears, they had already missed six conversations between the thief and the guard, including one detailing the terms of a certain Arrangement that the police would have _definitely_ liked to know about.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> But why does it feel like March was a whole ass decade and April is like 2 seconds long
> 
> ANYWAY next we get a Crowley POV :)))))))


	5. Tartan and Teacups

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Crowley takes another trip to the museum. He's being reimbursed for all these trips, don't worry (though it's best not to speculate where all this money comes from).

Crowley huffed and adjusted the lapels of his jacket again. New leather had no bend to it. It was so new, so optimistically crisp. There was none of the resigned pliability that came with age and fear of its owner. He’d fix that.

His _hair,_ on the other hand - it should know better than to stick up. He flattened it with a deft flick of a spit-dampened finger, frowning at his reflection in the floor-length mirror. He ran his hands a few more times through it, trying to get it to sit just so. As he did, he caught sight of the potted plant on his windowsill behind him.

He stuffed his hands into his jacket pockets. “What are you looking at,” he growled.

Crowley had a _perfectly_ good reason to be concerned with his appearance. One had to look adequately educated at a museum, everybody knew that. Completely unrelated to who he’d be seeing there. Nope, it had nothing to do with that security guard that he could already see in his mind’s eye, standing among all those crosses and Jesus paintings like some sort of angel, fiddling with his stupid tartan bowtie.

Tartan, honestly.

He’d visited the museum every day for two weeks now. For reconnaissance reasons, of course. He traversed the route to the hall of Holy Works of the Late Eleventh Century to Present Day so often that he could do it blindfolded, met up with the security guard so often he almost didn’t feel the little flip in his stomach every time he saw him.

Almost.

“Hello, Aziraphale,” he greeted. Every time he’d arrived, Aziraphale had lit up in a smile like he was genuinely surprised to see him. Today was no different.

“Crowley! Good to see you, dear boy. New jacket, I see?”

Crowley ran a hand over the crooked lapel again. “Real leather and all, thanks for noticing.”[1]

Aziraphale looked him up and down and narrowed his eyes. “Should I ask where you acquired such a luxury?”

“Better not,” Crowley replied darkly.[2]

“Well, I suppose it’s for the best.” Aziraphale smiled again.

Crowley gestured to the familiar path they’d taken for the past five days, not that he’d been counting. “Shall we?”

This particular museum had a small café adjacent to the gift shop that Aziraphale would frequent on his lunch break, and Crowley had taken to accompanying him. The muted chatter of diners effectively masked their conversations this way, which was important considering the rather sensitive nature of their correspondence.

“Any word from your side?” Aziraphale started once he was comfortably seated, his usual sandwich and cheesecake arranged in front of him.

The terms of their Arrangement were rather simple: Crowley relayed information to Aziraphale about the developing heist plans, and Aziraphale updated Crowley on the security measures the museum was putting into place. Their respective sides would be cancelling each other out anyway; Crowley reasoned he may as well forego all the trouble of sneaking around.

“I have it on good word one of the folks helping out with the setup of the exhibit is our guy,” Crowley replied, biting into his own sandwich. “Pretty sure the plan is to faulty wire the cases so we can get them open without tripping any alarms.”

“How very clever.”

“It was my idea,” Crowley replied, then blinked bewilderedly. He was unsure why he had said that when it was not, in fact, his idea.

Aziraphale smiled at him, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “You wily demon, you.”

 _That’s why,_ his mind supplied unhelpfully. He was suddenly grateful for the sunglasses hiding his eyes.[3]

“Any news for me?”

Aziraphale took a bite of his own sandwich before responding, his eyes fluttering closed for a moment as he chewed and swallowed. Crowley bit the inside of his cheek.

“I think you’ll be pleased at this, actually… but I’ve started training to do night shifts. Which means I’ve gotten acquainted with the camera room quite a bit, and I’ll probably be doing a lot more in there for the next few days.”

“That’s great, angel! You’ve been promoted, then?”

“Er- not entirely,” Aziraphale replied, staring down at his sandwich. “Gabriel might have… _strongly_ suggested I take on more work.”

“Well Gabriel can fuck right off,” Crowley said.

Aziraphale giggled into his teacup, then scanned the room quickly. “Careful, dear boy, there are ears all around.”

Crowley took another bite of ham sandwich and shrugged a single shoulder. “I’m just saying, he might consider eating his words when access to the camera operations _mysteriously_ makes its way into the opposition’s hands.”

“Now, really,” Aziraphale pouted, giving him a disapproving look before taking another bite of sandwich. “And what makes you think it will?”

“Well, it’s in the terms of what we _agreed_ upon-”

“Don’t mention that here,” Aziraphale interjected in a whisper, scanning the room again. “If our bosses found out what we were doing, we’d both be out of a job. And probably thrown quite unceremoniously into jail.”

“Not like that won’t happen to me anyway,” Crowley muttered, which earned a frown from the security guard. “Look, you said so yourself, no one watches the cameras in the cafeteria. Nobody’s going to know.”

Aziraphale stared at his sandwich, his reservation betrayed only by the crease between his eyebrows.

“Well, put it this way,” Crowley continued. “How mad would head office really be with you if you managed to give them the name of your little mole?”

He looked up at this, in a hopeful sort of way. Crowley looked quickly down at his own plate.

“All I’m saying is, I’ll convince my higher-ups to give me the name of our inside guy if you’ll give me the camera operations.”

“You really think you can manage that?”

Crowley shrugged. “I’ve been told I’m very persuasive.”

The security guard gave him the smallest of smiles before fixating on his plate, cheeks flushed pink. “That I’ll concede,” he replied, savoring his last bite of sandwich with a little noise that made Crowley’s throat close involuntarily. “But terms of any... _Arrangement_ aside, I’m not sure I’ll be able to manage it at all. Talking is one thing, but technology… we could be _traced._ We’d be caught for sure.”

“I’m not asking for an all-access pass,” Crowley said, putting his fork down and leaning in. “Just the gist of how it all works. Perhaps... a certain someone’s words might be recorded while you asked about the cameras?”

Aziraphale pondered this for a second, and his eyes crinkled in a manner that may have indicated mischief to anyone who was practiced enough in observing him (i.e., Crowley). “Gabriel does tend to brag about the system,” he thought aloud. “Really… it WOULD be his fault if he gave me more info than strictly necessary.”

Crowley raised an eyebrow. “Careful, dear boy, there are ears all around,” he mimicked.

Aziraphale glanced up through his eyelashes before looking back at his cheesecake, and his lips curved into a soft smile. 

“Serpent.”

“Bastard.”

Even biting the hell out of his cheek couldn’t stop the smile that came to Crowley’s face.

Let it be known that Aziraphale, in every way, shape and form, was the _opposite_ of his type. He was all soft edges and stolen glances and meals at sunset on a terrace in Italy, rather than noon on a Tuesday in a museum gift shop. Crowley wasn’t built for this soft sort of banter. He was all hard lines, and raw knuckles, and knife-edge remarks. He deflected more than a tin roof in the middle of a hailstorm. He was an _art thief,_ for Christ’s sake, he wasn’t supposed to be _nice._

Not that everything he was thinking now was nice, he conceded, as Aziraphale made another little noise around a mouthful of cheesecake. But in all his years of sneaking and thieving and what the public might refer to in general as Bad Deeds, he’d never planned for… _this._ For sitting in a shitty museum cafeteria eating shitty ham sandwiches and paying for a cheesecake every day just to listen to Aziraphale bite into it. Epicurean bastard, probably knew exactly what he was doing.

“I have no idea what I’m doing,” Aziraphale said sadly, as if he could hear Crowley’s internal monologue. Crowley mentally shook his head and brought his attention back to the conversation at hand. “In the camera room. There must be hundreds of different angles, and buttons, and levers and oh- put me on guard when your heist is to take place, and you’ll have to _try_ to get caught, honestly.”

“All the better for our side, then,” Crowley mused. Aziraphale gave him a forlorn look, and- _really,_ he had to know what he was doing with his fork between his lips like that.

“I’m _kidding,_ angel, I’m kidding,” he amended, looking anywhere but at the fork. “I’m sure you’ll get the hang of it, you’ve got a fair bit of time.”

“How much, do you think?”

“Well, the exhibit isn’t even due to get here for weeks. And I’d bet anything our side won’t want to hit it straight away. I’d wager you have a few months, at least.”

Aziraphale still didn’t look convinced, but brightened a little. He picked up his teacup and stared into the liquid.

“Months,” he echoed, an odd distant smile on his face. “I suppose… I suppose I can work with that.”

“No doubt. Come heist day, you’ll be a pro. You’ll watch me dash off with your artifacts in all the best cinematic angles. Make sure you get my good side,” he grinned, tilting his head.

Aziraphale frowned mid-sip. “You’ll be the one to do it, then? When the time actually comes?”

“No idea,” Crowley replied truthfully. “Could very well be, considering I’ll know the place best.” He smirked at Aziraphale’s growing look of concern. “Why? Is the angel scared of me getting caught?”

“Yes,” Aziraphale said simply, with such sincerity that Crowley was caught off-guard.

“Er,” he said, eloquently.

Aziraphale smiled again, though his mind was still clearly somewhere else. He wiped his mouth with a napkin and moved to stand up. Crowley followed suit, still wordless.

“Thanks for lunch once again,” Aziraphale started, smoothing down the front of his uniform. “It was scrumptious.”

“Right,” replied Crowley, and then finally processing what Aziraphale had just said, added: “It’s gift shop food, angel.”

Aziraphale’s smile got brighter. “Then perhaps it was the company that made it so enjoyable.”

What Crowley _meant_ to do was play that off, say something along the lines of “doubt it, evidently your standards are on the ground.” What he _did_ end up saying sounded more like “d-rk-mg-eeeeuuoookay.”

Aziraphale tended to have that effect on him.

The man in question just kept on smiling and nodded like he understood. “Well, I suppose we had better get a wiggle on,” he said.

“Er- what?”

“I’m guessing you still have quite a bit of the place to scope out if you do want to - how did you put it - _steal our artifacts in all the best cinematic angles._ And I do have a job to return to, unfortunately.”

“I got _that_ , it was the ‘wiggle on,’” Crowley muttered.

Archaic turns of phrase notwithstanding, the thief and the security guard said their goodbyes and parted ways, Crowley to do actual scouting work (knowledgeable about his craft as he was, Aziraphale was pathetically unaware of any other single part of the museum) and Aziraphale back to pacing his hall.

Not for the first time, Crowley wondered what would happen if there were no heist. If one day, their boss just came in and told him and Hastur right, never mind, forget the whole museum thing, changed my mind. Crowley, you can go back to nicking the stupid million-dollar decor from rich peoples’ apartments, and Hastur you can go back to - well, whatever the hell Hastur did all day.

He wondered if he might meet Aziraphale somewhere else, somewhere where it wouldn’t matter if they were seen together. They could go to an actual restaurant, stay as long as they’d like. Crowley could buy him every single dessert on the menu and go back and forth with him on every subject under the sun. He wondered if he might let Crowley accompany him back home. Wondered if his lips would still taste like cheesecake.

He shook his head vigorously, earning weird looks from a family observing the Victorian Era painting along with him. There WAS, in fact, a heist. And if he kept this up, when the time came for the actual stealing to take place it’d be a disaster.

“I never meant to become an art thief,” he muttered. “Just… needed a flatmate. And then he came with some baggage.”

He shook his head again (and the family next to him shuffled away). He could do this. Not that he really had any other choice. But he could pull this off. Feelings? He could stomp down feelings like nobody’s business. If feelings were grapes, Crowley could retire and make wine for a living on the Venetian countryside. 

He wondered what sort of wine Aziraphale liked. Wondered how much it would take for him to let Crowley take off that stupid bowtie.

Tartan, _honestly._

* * *

1\. It wasn't. back  
2\. Target. back  
3\. Crowley had managed to convince Aziraphale to let him keep his glasses on by day three, citing the fact that the museum obviously knew who he was, anyway. back

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can we talk about the fact that the first time Crowley refers to Aziraphale as "angel" it's a derogatory term like how he says blessed and heaven but as their friendship goes on it slowly starts to take on new meaning so that by armageddon it's an actual term of endearment because I think about that a lot


End file.
